Such a printing device is known from DE 100 22 152 A1. This is a printing device that is designed as a thermal printer in which the thermal slat prints the temperature-sensitive labels by local heating. With this known type of printer, product labels of different widths can be printed, wherein the width of the thermal slat has to be adapted to the maximum width of the label to be printed.
From DE 41 39 445 A1 a print head is known which is pretensioned using a multitude of springs that are provided between the print head and end stops of movable shanks.
From DE 33 15 947 A1 a print device is known in which the print head, which comprises the printing plate and a heater for heating the printing plate, is connected to an operating device that is movable in the opposite direction and that comprises elastic elements in the form of leaf springs.
In printing devices of the type mentioned in the introduction it is crucial that the surface pressure between the active area of the thermal slat and the label to be printed always remains the same so as to ensure good print quality. On the other hand the thermal slat, due to its contact with the surface of labels, is subject to wear and tear which limits the service life of the thermal slat. In particular when labels are printed whose width is considerably less than the width of the thermal slat, the printing device operates in an uneconomical manner because wear and tear in this region leads to failure of the thermal slat although the outer zone of said thermal slat is still functional. Moreover, wider thermal slats are of course more expensive than narrower ones.